


when the man comes around

by sweetestsight



Series: riders on the storm [3]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: Four Horsemen AU, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 03:48:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19054633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: “War,” she says flatly, “as I’ve already told your associate, the timeline is running short. The apocalypse is upon us. Heaven needs to know the plan.”“Plan? Uh, I guess we’re going to Cleveland.”“The plan for the Apocalypse, War.”“Oh. I dunno about that.”The End is nigh. The four horsemen are at Arby's.





	when the man comes around

The wind is howling—literally howling like a hellhound, and he should know. The two sounds are a little too similar for his taste.

He takes a drag of his cigarette and looks up. The clouds are swirling in a never-ending whirlpool, ozone almost palpable in the air. He can’t make heads or tails of it.

“Antichrist again?” Ratty asks at his side.

He shakes his head, not taking his eyes off the sky. “No. You should head in.”

“I want to be here for the showdown.”

“There won’t be a showdown. Order me some mozzarella sticks.”

Ratty huffs. The door creaks as it opens, letting a square of artificial light and the strong smell of deep-fry oil pass through before it slams shut again.

He steps into the parking lot just as the heavens open up, sheets of rain dump down like nothing he’s ever seen. It’d be hard to breathe, if breathing was something he had to do. As it is he’s soaked to the bone within seconds.

Lightning cracks through the air before hitting the middle of the parking lot with a resounding crash, making the nearest cars shake and bounce on their shocks. Several car alarms immediately begin wailing. A woman steps out from the blast zone and brushes off the sleeves of her suit before frowning, silencing them with an irritated flick of her hand.

“What’s the rain for?” he calls.

She starts, spots him and then straightens. “I don’t believe we’ve met. It’s a privilege, though I wish it was under better circumstances.”

He spits his sodden cigarette into a puddle.

“I’m Gabriel. Don’t know if you recognized me.”

“I did,” he offers.

“The armies of heaven are growing impatient, as I’m sure you might be able to tell,” she continues, gesturing up at the clouds. “We’re ready to begin. We’re waiting on your command.”

He hums noncommittedly.

“O Death, we await your call into battle. Bring forth Armageddon. The seals have been broken. It is time. Surely you know we can’t delay.”

He searches through his pockets. Must be more cigarettes in here. No, but they’ll just get wet from the rain.

“The end of days is nigh! The Antichrist walks among us! Surely you know you cannot resist the signs?”

His fingers meet something else. Smiling to himself he pulls out a peppermint from the last restaurant they’d hit. Nice.

She frowns. “No—no offense to you, O Pale Rider, but—is there maybe anyone else in there I can talk to?”

He sucks on his peppermint for a moment, pretending to think. “No,” he says finally, turning around.

“Wait!” she calls. “It’s just that I heard Famine is kind of running things these days, and it’s just really important that I talk to someone about this. Look, I just got sent here by my boss, okay? It’ll just take a minute of his time.”

“He’s busy.”

“What is he doing?”

“He’s trying to decide on a main course.”

“Could I give you my boss’ number? Maybe he can call when he’s free?”

He scratches his neck. “I dunno. We’re on a pretty tight schedule.”

“To get on with Armageddon?”

“No, we’re trying to hit Cleveland before Tuesday.”

Now she frowns. “I don’t want to have to go upstairs and tell him I was met with stubborn insolence—”

“I mean, you can if you want to—”

“Look, could you just go get one of the others for me please? It’ll hardly take—”

The door bursts open. “John!” Roger calls.

John rolls his eyes. “In a minute!”

“Freddie wants you in here now!”

“I’m busy, Rog.”

“Oh,” Roger says, then drifts forward into the rain. “ _Oh,_ ” he says again. “Hello there. Have we met?”

John pinches the bridge of his nose. “Gabriel, Roger. Roger, Gabriel.”

“Gabriel,” Roger repeats. “I know you. You had seven wings at the time, as I remember. Looking good, looking good. Rome, was it?”

“War,” she says flatly, “as I’ve already told your associate, the timeline is running short. The apocalypse is upon us. Heaven needs to know the plan.”

“Plan? Uh, I guess we’re going to Cleveland.”

“The plan for the Apocalypse, War.”

“Oh. I dunno about that.”

“Where’s Famine?”

“He’s in there with the other one. None of these guys have ever had Arby’s before.”

“Well, I had Arby’s,” John says to him quietly.

“Well yeah, I know you did. Fred didn’t.”

“Fred can’t.”

“Yeah, he hadn’t had McDonalds either but Brian doesn’t like them—”

“Not sure why he likes Arby’s then—”

“Yeah, Arby’s ‘Got The Meats’, you know? But they’ve also got mozzarella sticks.”

Gabriel stares at them with the glazed eyes of someone three seconds away from having a stroke.

“He’s a vegetarian,” John clarifies helpfully.

“No, I’m not.”

“Not you. Brian is.”

“Well, yeah. Yeah, we tried to go to Subway but they were out of everything cause Fred had an ‘accident’” he says, miming air quotes.

“Yeah, but then he said Subway doesn’t even have many vegetarian options anyway so now we’re here.”

“Mhmm. I’m not really holding out on this working out either since those two are unsupervised in there. The romaine lettuce thing is over but you never really know what they’ll get up to.”

“Who’d think we’re the responsible ones?” John asks with a snicker.

“Leave it to the youngest of the four of us to keep everything together.”

“Boys!” Gabriel snaps, then pales when they turn to her. “Sorry. Great Ones, please. If you’re really the responsible ones then you know how important this is.”

The door to the restaurant swings open and Brian and Freddie tumble out, bags in tow. Freddie yelps when his foot lands in a deep puddle.

Gabriel frowns. “Now that I have the four of you here—”

“Look at this,” Freddie whines. “These shoes are from the 90s. They can’t withstand weather like this. They’ll fall apart!”

“Thirty years isn’t even that old,” John tells him.

“The 1890s, John! Come on, we need to get in the car!”

“We’re not staying?”

“No, we got take out. We need to go immediately!”

Roger frowns. “Why?”

“There’s a little outbreak of scarlet fever happening,” Brian says sheepishly. “It’s not even my fault, I’m serious! They didn’t vaccinate, okay? Everyone else vaccinated except for one table and I lost focus for barely even a minute, I swear to you—”

“Like I said, we’re leaving,” Freddie says primly, starting toward the car.

Roger and Brian follow quickly, and John only lingers for a moment to flip Gabriel a lazy salute.

 She sputters. “You need to stay and talk about this with me!”

“We need to get out of here, apparently. Sorry. It’s been real.”

“The four of you can’t run!” She shouts. “We’ll find you no matter where you go! You think you’re invincible? We’ll find a way to make you do this! You are harbingers of the apocalypse and you _will_ bring the end of times!”

Her tirade is cut short as he reaches the car, gets in and slams the door.

The four of them sit in awkward silence for a long moment as he starts the car and pulls out of the parking lot. He can see her in the rear view mirror, still screaming. She’ll be easy to drive away from but he’s less confident in their ability to outrun her—or her associates, rather. They’re on bought time now.

The silence is broken by a crunch as Roger starts on his onion rings.

“You alright?” Freddie murmurs. His face is right next to his ear from the way he’s leaning up from the back seat, his face wedged between John and Brian’s headrests.

“Fine.”

“John,” he tries, and when John doesn’t take his eyes off the road he tries again. “Johhhhhhhnn.”

“What?!”

“It’ll be alright. Everything will be fine,” he singsongs.

John rolls his eyes.

“It’s okay. Open up.”

A mozzarella stick is pressed to his mouth insistently until he eats it.

“Good job.”

“I hate you people,” John mutters.

“Don’t be mad, John!” Roger says. “We’re going to Cleveland!”

“If we end up triggering the end of times in Cleveland of all places—”

“We can’t,” Freddie says conversationally. He shoves another mozzarella stick at John’s face, ignoring his muffled protests. “We can’t start the end of times in Cleveland because Cleveland is already the worst place on Earth. If the apocalypse happened there nothing would change. See, we’re safe.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Brian murmurs sincerely beside him. “You’re overthinking this.”

“ _You’re_ accusing him of overthinking?” Roger says. “Hell’s having a snow day.”

“I’m serious,” Brian says. “It’ll be okay. We’re still in control here, even if it doesn’t feel like it. At the end of the day Heaven and Hell still fear the four of us, and with good reason.” Freddie pats Brian on the shoulder in a congratulatory manner and awards him with a mozzarella stick. “Thanks, Fred. We’re still four immortal all-powerful beings. Let’s not forget that.”

They drive in silence for a spell, passing food around and watching the town go by. As soon as they pass its limits the rain ends with unnatural abruptness and John lets out a sigh of relief. He accepts the half of a sandwich Freddie thrusts through the gap between the seats. “What happens when they catch up with us again?” he asks finally.

“We’ll give them a hell of a time,” Roger says with a quiet laugh.

“No, I’m serious. What happens? How does this end?”

“I don’t know, John,” Brian says. “It could end with the apocalypse. It could end just like this, or maybe someday they’ll give up. I don’t know. I think we’ll have to wait and see.”

“We’re good at that, aren’t we?” Roger says. “Waiting?”

“Comes with the territory,” Freddie says dryly. “Oh, leave it. It’s all horribly heavy, isn’t it? Look outside. It’s the end of times but life is going on.”

“Off to the left you’ll even see the locusts flying,” John mutters darkly.

“That’s what locusts do,” Roger replies primly.

“You guys really think this is all just going to go away?”

“I think it’s all going to fade into the background eventually, just like everything else. Just like heaven and hell, all the angels and demons. Just like the big man upstairs.”

“Not us,” John says. Never them. There will always be a place for disease and starvation and violence; there will always be a place for death.

“No, I suppose not, though we are getting more obsolete by the day,” Freddie says conversationally. “Just you wait, Deaky. They’ll find a cure for you, too.”

“And he’ll finally get a damn break when they do,” Roger says through a mouthful of food, then bursts out laughing. “Fuck. Speaking of obsolete, I almost didn’t recognize Gabriel.”

“You _didn’t_ recognize Gabriel,” John says with a snicker. The sound has Brian turning to look at him with a tiny surprised smile.

“She looked different and I hadn’t seen her in—in two millenia, almost!”

“Nearly three, darling. I would think so, anyway,” Freddie laughs. “I was there. God, she had that horrible haircut at the time. She calls us harbingers but I think she was trying to trigger the punk wave several millennia too early.”

“She looks good now, I’d say. Got that cleaned up, at least.”

Brian chokes. “Wait—in the parking lot, that was Gabriel?!”

The three of them burst out laughing.

There are 279 miles to go until they hit Cleveland. In that distance any manner of things could happen; they'd be better off materializing there, really. 

But then they'd waited even longer for the Apocalypse, had they not? And yet here they are. 

And he almost hates himself for even thinking it. He doesn't even bother thinking it at all, but some hidden part of him in the quiet recesses of his mind rolls over the fact, just once, that it might not actually be about the journey in the first place. That's one thing mortals might have gotten right, in all this time. 

He accepts another mozzarella stick and catches Freddie's eye in the rear view mirror. When Freddie smiles he gives in and smiles back as the car clunks forward toward whatever hell and high water the road to Cleveland will bring. 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago, forgot I finished it, was reminded last night (thanks stanlonbrough you the realest), got caught in my bullshit before I could post it, and now here it is finally! And no I STILL haven't gotten around to seeing Good Omens yet but I'm literally so excited to have time to do so I can't even properly express it. Consider this finally being published in honor of that finally being released!


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